A Remarkable Talent For Self Preservation
by Alice Starling
Summary: Draco Malfoy wishes to off himself; unfortunately, Astoria is not interested in assisted suicide.


During his seventh year at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy found himself obsessed with suicide.

At first, he kept baiting the Weasley girl, kept trying to provoke her into a homicidal rage; but after some point, she stopped looking at him like he was a cockroach and started looking at him more like he was something mangy, terminally-ill Pygmy Puff. This would have wounded his ego if there was anything left to wound; as it was, it was only another disappointment. If he was going to bite the big one, then he'd at least rather have the pleasure of knowing a Weasley was going to be punished for it.

So when that failed, he moved on to Longbottom, who had apparently spent the summer between sixth and seventh year growing some courage. It would be even easier to get Longbottom to kill him, he thought- Draco was after all the much-adored nephew of the woman who had destroyed Longbottom's parents. But apparently waxing poetically- and loudly- about his Aunt Bellatrix did not get the reaction Draco intended. Not only did Longbottom manage to ignore him, but half of bloody Dumbledore's Army wound up convinced that Draco was harboring an incestuous lust for his Aunt Bellatrix.

Which was, of course, revolting in and of itself. Bellatrix was _old._

After being so rudely ignored by Longbottom, Draco committed his efforts to the rest of Dumbledore's Army- or at least, who he assumed to be in Dumbledore's Army. It wasn't so hard to pick them out: they all looked sleepy, fatigued, and also somewhat obstinate. Draco thought the Carrows had to be rather stupid not to maybe correlate the identities of the midnight vandals to the students who habitually fell asleep during class; of course, the Carrows _were_ rather stupid, so it was Snape he found himself curious about.

Surely Snape had to notice something; Snape was maddeningly intelligent, not to mention a master at Legilimency and Occlumency. But Draco did not mention his growing suspicions about the greasy Headmaster to his mother or father whenever he wrote them. They could sort out the whole damn war by themselves. It was no longer Draco's business, as Draco would hopefully be dead before the whole thing was done with.

As it was, he was having very little luck on the suicide front. Weasley and Longbottom seemed to have figured out his master plan, because Dumbledore's Army wouldn't even go to the efforts to hex him properly. It was all rather insulting.

His last resort was to beg the help of Astoria Greengrass; she was Daphne Greengrass's younger sister and, Draco suspected, a recent recruit to Dumbledore's Army. She had begun falling asleep in class and turning up splattered with luminous yellow paint on the nights the DA participated in good-natured vandalism; but not even Daphne seemed to notice this.

In Draco's opinion, war had made everyone on his side stupid, and everyone on the other side more intelligent. This, he felt, was an unfair handicap and even more reason for him to consider offing himself.

The problem with asking Astoria for help was that she had to be so cursedly _reasonable_.

"Well, why don't you just do it?" she asked, looking up at him sleepily.

She was lying on her back on the cold stone floor of the Slytherin common room, the front of her shirt stained with glowing paint; Draco had caught her trying to sneak back in at three in the morning when everyone else was in bed and had threatened to tell the Carrows about her activities with the DA if she didn't help him.

"What are you on about?" he snapped.

Astoria heaved a sigh. "Well, if you actually wanted to kill yourself, you would have done it by now, wouldn't you have? Thrown yourself off the Astronomy tower, gotten yourself lost in the Forbidden Forest; find a cursed object, I know you have one of them...Look, we're wizards, Draco, we leave millions of ways to commit suicide just laying about."

"Throwing myself off the Astronomy tower would be incredibly undignified, thank you." Draco snorted, insomuch as a Malfoy could snort. Not that it really mattered; Lucius had done enough eternal shaming of the family that whatever Draco did was inconsequential.

"What would dignified matter if you're dead?" she rose an eyebrow, crossing her arms across her chest and smearing the still-wet paint. "Besides, all your efforts to provoke the DA have been incredibly half-hearted. They all rather pity you."

"Pity me?" Draco said, indignant.

"Well, look at you, Malfoy. You look horrible- you were pale before, but now you're downright corpse-like. Plus, everyone knows that your father's not the big bad Death Eater he's made himself out to be," Astoria said, with the trace of a smile. At Draco's frustrated look, she shrugged.

"The other Death Eaters' children have been spreading it around that Malfoy the Elder got his wand taken away by the Dark Lord. Actually, the other Death Eaters' have been saying some pretty nasty things about you and your family."

"However this war ends, I have no future," said Draco dramatically. "Best to end it now."

Astoria made a doubtful noise. "Then why haven't you tried?"

"Haven't you been listening, woman? I've been trying! Weasley and Longbottom and Lovegood and...All of your stupid little friends refuse to kill me!" Draco sounded rather shrill by now.

"You're not trying, Malfoy. The wittiest thing you've said in weeks was when you told Hannah Abbott that she was ugly, and she just laughed at you. And if we didn't know any better, we'd have all thought you were trying to _flirt_ with Weasley."

Draco shuddered. "Don't _say_ that!"

"Well, it's the truth," said Astoria irritably. "Besides, you've obviously spent too much time with your Death Eater pals, because normal people- at least, people not bent on world domination and genocide- don't go around killing people for no reason. Now, what is exactly that you want me to do?"

"Help me off myself. In the most noble way possible."

She toyed with the split ends of her mess of blonde curls. "No."

This momentarily stumped Draco. "But, why not?"

"Haven't you noticed, Malfoy?" Astoria said, tiredly. "No gives a damn about you anymore. You're just some sad little git with an over-inflated ego. Everyone knows about your little crying sessions with Moaning Myrtle."

If it were possible, Draco would have paled.

"Yes, that's right. Orla Quirke walked in on you months ago. How is it possible that you're so oblivious?"

Draco did not deem the question worth of an answer.

"Why do you want to die, anyway?"

She was heading into a territory that required a level of greater familiarity; if she were one of his friends- if he actually _had_ any friends- he might feel compelled to elaborate on his reasons for suicide, but as she wasn't, he didn't. So he sniffed. "If you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you."

"And if you're not going to tell me, then I'm not going to help you," she told him pleasantly, propping herself up on her elbows. "But even if I were to help you- which I most certainly am not- you'd probably bungle it up somehow. I think the reason you haven't put the right amount of effort into this whole suicide bit is that you have a remarkable talent for self-preservation."

"No, I don't. I'm a Death Eater," he said glumly. "If that doesn't just shout stupidity, I don't know what does."

"I didn't say you weren't _stupid_." She sighed and scrambled to her feet. "But you're still alive, aren't you? All the stupid things you've done, you're still _alive_." And then, waspishly: "You've almost as much a talent for coming out of horrible situations relatively unscathed as, say, Harry Potter."

Draco spluttered.

"Oh, be quiet, you." She smirked then, her blue eyes gleaming maliciously; and then, before he could do anything else, she leaned forward and pressed her lips lightly to his. The kiss was over in a instant; she drew backward, sighing contentedly and smoothing down the front of her shirt. "Well, then, I'm off to bed. If you still feel the need to off yourself in the morning, let me know. Maybe I'll reconsider helping you."

He watched, speechless, as the younger girl swaggered off towards the girls' dormitories; she wasn't even the _pretty_ Greengrass sister. She was the tomboy-ish, Gryffindor-loving, Slytherin-Quidditch-team-_reject _Greengrass sister.

Still, Draco thought as he absentmindedly touched his lips, maybe he had been a bit too hasty about this whole suicide thing.

* * *

**A/N: It came out more light-hearted than I'd intended...Leave a review, please, tell me what you think.**


End file.
